david lamar sings a mean blues song . . .

woke up with "got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time" in my head.
listening to my brother's rad band diarama.
they have a show at the most awesome music palace in nashvegas on the 26th of april with the superb lone official.
i'm really tempted to buy an air ticket right now.
worried i'd want to stay.
thing is i never had a better friend than michael eng, and he has so much talent, tears just stream down my face . . .
and lone official is with my old friends "black label empire" who i miss and adore . . .
greg garing might be somewhere around nashville, and kenny vaughn might be playing some mean guitar solos for the enviable luckyones . . . and i wonder if nashville still keeps its bars choked up on smoke, and if i could make it to the blugrass inn for a minute to see gillian welch.

i guess i'm buzzing off two great shows in a row.
terribly worried los angeles is losing andy clockwise for a while.
do we deserve him?
last night i was scheduled for a boring night of sauna plus orange juice, with the delightful redemption of cinespace's devil's orchestra and keith 2.0, but got intercepted by sean harrigan of gotickets.com.
he informed me of a secret last minute show at dakota lounge santa monica, formerly temple bar . . .
i had almost called david lamar last night because he's the kindest soul in hollywood . . . and sure enough sean was cooking up dinner for the lamar blues band composed of a mystery guy on harmonica, who denied being one of the musicians when i asked, the exceptional lisa harriton, kristian attard, tamir on drums, and nick maybury. lamar's vocals make me homesick!
beautiful johnna lynn of copperpeace was there with veronica. heard johnna may start making custom gear in addition to her artful guitar straps and ties and things . . .
sean is just a little too cool and explained how his programs are settling ticket sales in canada, and engineer dustin regaled me with tales of nick cave and scroobius and is generally so fantastic.
he asked if i was on drugs, which is texas code for "you have a lot of enthusiasm." that was the winning question . . . . the bane of my life in nashville . . . to which the answer is NO, No, no, emphatically n0!
i'm just so invigorated by my brilliant friends . . . if only he could have seen the malaise of my life without good live music . . .

meanwhile according to the wild wild web,
duane denison is playing with legendary shack shakers, the most radical rockabilly punk impressarios.
duane used to play with my genius friend david soldi in a band known as funiki, or the brian kotzer band.
i heard from david, and he is still in exile in the land of indiana, with a beautiful lass named rachel, and what i wouldn't give to hear soldi play again!
he sort of was ringleader for the excellent nashville band communist, who basically exceeded MGMT's radness before MGMT but in a similar farcical vein.
communist was black label empire based.
as are silver jews, which i've seen in the los angeles edition of "the onion" so man, i know they are super cool!!!
i used to work at this legendary bar the goldrush, and would wonder "who is that annoying guy?"
the annoying guy was the very charismatic david burman who heads up the silver jews with his gorgeous gal . . . and i guess they are an underground cult phenomenon.

david koci was my other genius-david best friend, and i have his "alpha" song stuck in my head lately.
he got me into sinead o'connor, and all things celtic or mystical, taught me how to hug, and love unconditionally, and feel spiritual value of life and existence.

he programmed sick industrial beats in addition to playing the most gripping folk songs.
eliot wilcox made amazing collage art and played in a glamrock band called milkshake.
i never saw them play. they reincarnated as "aquanet"---yes like the hairspray---and he lives in one of the carolinas . . .
a lot of the black label empire people are still around . . . usually playing in multiple bands for max confusion.
nashville still scares me though.
too many churches.
too much fried food.
racist cops.
but really the smell of the magnolias is so nice in the heat of the summer, if you aren't lynched, as was a little boy in my neighborhood of east nashville when i was a child.
you can never go home, or look homeward angel, and then you find you have no home, and are among the hunted . . .
so maybe when rebecca stout sang about the bell witch and the dirty south, there was something to run from . . .
mark holladay wrote a song "i fucking hate you" in my honor and the "bunk acid" song. seriously amazing punk if you ask me, and i was leaving for california. he played in the sixers, a lucy's recordshop punk band. i miss his song "there is no moon tonight" and "dear rebecca." i think his wail rivals that of greg garing, or nashvillian jack white for pure pristine heartbreakingness. a master/slave song i remember, and the saga of "the lawnmower man."

i mean, i met lucinda williams at the exit/in, nearly got stepped on by gillian welch in a packed house, i was sitting by the stage on the floor . . .
and the melvins got yelled at for having long hair by a goldrusher . . . they left and played a mean show . . .
i wonder where jamie jones is . . . he had this mad passion for music, the melvins in particular.

so my los angeles genius friends have started to warm my frosty heart. brian mcguire of gene wilder reminds me tremendously of my brother michael eng, for his graciousness and authentic sentimentality or the eliciting thereof . . . and Cranes on el centro is the LA equivalent of the Nashville Springwater . . . and i guess the Echo too is important somehow, like a Mercy lounge.
still a little peeved i missed dungen, the coolest swedish psychadelic rockers . . . saw them in portland at the doug fir lounge.
and laura marling, pj harvey, and ane brun are the most radical lady rockers i can think of . . .
but to hear julia screech with michael eng on a diarama track . . . wow . . . gotta miss the nineties . . .
andy clockwise has kept me placated, and mitchell's folly with delightful houston and jesse from memphis, make LA a bit a bit more like tennessee to me . . . but damn! can i just say? i am so homesick for some banjos and mandolins and washboards and spoons and clogging.
i told cam from thunder from heaven that thunder was about the only thing keeping me in LA last 08 summer, as i floated through the clouds of smog . . .and he said, yeah me too.
i told him there was nothing like thunder from heaven in all the world.
on this hysterical live audio from the march 1 09 cinespace show, val let me hear myself screaming "i'm like the number one thunder from heaven fan ever" or something similarly absurd, but kinda true . . .and she said she and cam always laugh when they hear that . . .
this stressful day i thought my head would explode, january 30 2009, i got to chat with cam.
he warms me up to being human again, to feeling things.
pj harvey's "snake" song is the best thing i can think of . . .and cam singing about human snakes . . . i was born year of the snake . . . i heard we're vicious . . . lou reed "why don't you swallow razorblades?" . . . brilliant . . .
snake of eden i still love you and am thrilled i'm quoted on your myspace . . .
lost my thought . . .
this other nashville cat, dave hays, had a song about about "got jesus on the telephone, looking for another methadone clinic . . . all i need from you is a . . . baby . . . is a little more nothing . . . wasted time . . . worried lines . . . don't you know everything's going to be fine . . ."
and chris h., this madison artist painted frida kahlo's rival art about hearts and surgery and veins . . .
and richard burchette was the east nashville ambidextrous michaelangelo, before his dad angel's lungs blew up in the emphysmatic oxygen combustion-death, vietnam traumatized . . .

and caleb bennet wrote the sweetest mornful song about a "crash and burn . . . did i tell you about the crash and burn? do i tell you about the things i learned? but you didn't seem to understand, no you didn't quite comprehend, when i told you i can't go on. . .can't go on like this anymore . . .it's a hepcat city . . . don't let me tell ya twice . . .aww you sure look pretty . . . don't let me be too nice . .."
to hear greg garing haunting the halls of jitters with his song, "all at once i lived in dreams and fantasies, dreamed of someone real, someone to hold, always fearing one that i would love too much, for where would i be found when love grows cold? they say when you dream of true love you'll never find, the kind of love to touch your very soul . . . then at once i stopped and was stuck there in your eyes, shaken by a dream too real to hold. i know that you've been hurt for i can hear your silent cry calling through the memories and the pain don't you know your nothing less than perfect in my eyes? i know this is the chance that i must take . . ."
porter hale and caleb bennet with his long red dreadlocks and greg garing would sit around jamming into the wee hours in 95. . .
and then greg garing played tootsies with kenny vaughn and justin of
the gypsy hombres who might give the beirut-devotchka contingent a run for their money . . .
and who knows where albaniamania went, but they were some rad transplanted nashville to LA cats with an accordian.
its all about the accordian.
rebecca stout of the shakers, baby stout, and circus inebrius is still about the most amazing thing ever, and an angeleno now . ..
ohhh, those were the days my friend . . .
i gave porter hale one of the nicest caleb bennet portraits i painted.
i painted nick maybury the other day. i'm too shy to show him, because i don't want him to think i'm obsessed or anything, which i am of course as he's a lucky talented genius, and the most polite kind person in LA. i have been obsessed with so many talented people, and so much music that makes life worth living, and makes silly beatles tunes pop in your head again. so that you can think of nothing else, and life is a song, and love lives again, because someone's art has touched you, and i'm so happy for everyone, i'm just crying and wonder if i could make it back to nashville to hear michael eng sing "moviescreen" at the springwater
but maybe i should just stay where i am love the ones i'm with, and study law, and fight for truth and justice, and go over the the hollywood gay and lesbian center to learn about fighting hatecrime, and hatespeech, and ponder what its like to live on the outside, or in darfur right now, starving.
or the streets of hollywood, homeless and hungry.
my dad wrote poems.
he had one about oscar wilde being imprisoned for the crime of love.
homophobia is so no beuna . . .
my dad was the fairest person ever and raised us to care about justice and words and dignity.
"never say an unkind word" was his mantra.
i can hear it still.
he's speechless now.
i grew up to the clatter of typewriter keys, maybe why its so comforting now to write . . .and publish instantly.
storybooks and treasuremaps were true in his universe, and that is where we grew up.
his war poems lamented the impossibility of conveying vietnam to his little child.
i still don't get it.
neither did he.
but we still have to obey the giant warmachine, right?
"if you had an acoustic guitar, they said that you were, a protest singer . . ."
maybe it will be time soon . . .
hurry up, its time
and his friend bob lind sang an elusive butterfly, and the last shadow puppets from scotland remind me so of those happy days . . . when innocence was so kind to we little ones, michael and i . . .
the kopfkino, the moviescreen, the movie in your head, the last instant, die letzte instanz, das ich at the church, das ich became the newest portrait, and hid something frightening, with something else frightening, more ghosts of people i have loved . . .
art that broke my heart
as laura marling sings "the ghosts that broke my heart before i met you"